Is BC really that big selling point??? And was it ever so?

People keep telling me BC is huge selling point on Xbone.

And that it will sell PS5 like hot cakes.

But I just dont see it.

I got piles of 360 and OXB games, but feel no need to buy Xbone to play them.

Wii was BC with GC. But obviously this did not sell, since latter Wii models were no longer BC with GC.

Same with DS models. Early models were BC with GBA, latter models werent.

So, obviously Nintendo thought BC was no seller. And I agree with them.

So onto PS5...

I got piles of PS1, PS2, PS3 and PS4 games. But no interest to play them all on PS5.

Same way I had no interest to play PS1 games on PS3.

So, for me, personally, BC has no real value. Those old games I still like, I can play on old consoles. And if I ever buy Xbone or PS5, it will be purely for new games, not old. Despite the fact that I'm big retro fan and play old games all the time. On those old consoles.

But anyways. How do you feel about BC? Has it ever been big selling point for you, when you bought a new console?

Since the PS4 sold so much I think BC is much more worthwhile now. Too many people have to many games this gen in their backlog due to F2P games and games as a service becoming a huge thing.

I know people that haven’t played many single player games but have bought them only bc they can’t get away from the Warframes, Fortnites, etc.

BC was always nice to have but now I think it’s almost a necessity.

No. It's just that Microsoft is showing how to do it properly. And by far, the best way to do BC.

Switch has nothing to offer and Sony's Ps2 offerings are pathetic and overpriced.

I think we'll see PC emulation used for everything before PS4 because it is so hard to do. And I expect to see full PS4/Switch+ BC included in the future generations of consoles. Because from the PS4 onwards they are all basically using PC architecture.

So I'm happy as long as they provide the easy-to-do stuff and aren't too stingy as a publisher on the really old game support in the emulation scene. Just draw a line and let the fans handle the old games, and get the easier PS4+ support in order, so that you won't run into this problem in the future.

For almost everything from before PS4 I think people will rather have their own retro arcade/mini-pc to play them on, so they are all on one platform. That's much cleaner anyway. And people have bought these games like 5 times already to play them on multiple systems. Give the enthusiasts a break.

If it was the proper way all games would be BC on xbox one not just 25% as an afterthought.

Its definitely a selling feature. If you own xbox & 360 games, its a big selling point to continue within the ecosystem.

as far as the PS5 is concerned it is for me as i have never had a PS4. so i plan to get a PS5 and raid the PS4 backlog as well as get PS5 games.

speaking more broadly though: i have been soberly reminded this year about 2 truths: hardware fails and consoles stop getting produced. my vita died this year. Getting a new one is expensive where i am. getting a used one: god knows what could be wrong with it.

so that's it. all those vita games i had...useless. all the DLC i bought for various vita games (which wasnt much but still): gone. thats it. sony dont currently produce a device that will play vita games (i think vita production has ended). 10 years from now its going to be nigh on impossible (and expensive) to get one. so i traded the games in and called it a day (at least it took a chunk out of my backlog. still i was in the middle of a Ys8 playthrough so still stings a bit).

contrast that to my PC: i have games decades old that will work just fine. If i buy a game today and my PC craps the bed, i know my next PC and my next next gen PC and the PC after that and the possible smachZ i may get AND the laptop i have and any future laptop i may get...etc......all of these devices will play the games i bought decades ago, the games i buy today and the games i buy going forward. its not perfect BC but its generally very solid.

i wouldnt think BC should be a big selling point but more a matter of confidence in the platform. I know when i buy a game for some consoles (looking at you PS3 and switch) i am on the clock. I'm praying my wiiu doesnt kick the bucket because that covers my wiiu, wii and my wiiware/VC purchases (nintendo has shut down that store).

so it's a consumer friendly feature. not a big system selling feature in and of itself but its worth the effort both to preserve older games (which is important) and to give people more confidence in buying a load of games for a platform. it is also something people look for: one of the more common requests of the switch: where is the VC? will my VC purchases from the wii and wiiu carry over (no is the answer)?

it should be easier to maintain BC between the PS4 and PS5 (and the X1 and X2) as they all look to be using the same overall architecture (X86, GCN based GPU etc.) some work may still need to go in to cover some odd quirks in the hardware (like the X1X mapping the 32MB of ED ram in the X1 to the GDDR memory) but it shouldnt be anything like trying to emulate a PS3 on a PS4 (good luck with that).

It is actually.

It is actually.

Cas ein point someone I know who plays games said that's wspcifically that the onlyr eason they ahve an Xbox one is because of that... and wouldn't buy n any system without it...

Something like that anyway.

Well it is for me so there you go.

BC is pointless as 99.99999999% of gamers NEVER use it.

The tiny minority of gamers who actually do use it, typically play that old game for 15 minutes and remember why they stopped playing those old games.

People buy new consoles to play new games.

No, It's a added feature that's great. If you are still primarily buying it for current gen games, cool. If you are just wanting to play 360 games, great big waste of money.

For me personally, no. And no one really gave a shit about it until this gen when Xbox ran out of talking points to hype up their console. B/C was an afterthought when they were getting steamrolled, otherwise it would have come straight out of the box with support for ALL 360 games. It's a great feature, but less of a big deal for people who want to move forward that didn't sell their old consoles.

All I know is that Sony fannies get upset everytime BC is mentioned. Not sure why though.

@henrythefifth: I think it’s just a nice bonus. I actually rarely play a game twice.

There are so many new games, I hardly find the time to play them.

I recently did buy Silent Hill collection on Xbox One (it was on sale) and I thought the controls are rubbish and it’s hard to play.

The same goes for Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3, those controls are just awful.

However, I still love street fighter 3.

It might not be a straight up system seller, but the kind of enhanced BC we've started seeing this gen provides a nice reward for not leaving an ecosystem.

It's a pro-consumer feature that encouraged me to get a 60GB PS3. Its lack was one of my biggest disappointments with the PS4.

It wasn't necessarily a big selling point for me before, but I was quite disappointed when I first learned that none of my digital XBLA arcade games would work on the XOne initially. Those were small digital games, I was naive to think just because of that they would all be playable on my XOne at launch.

The way they did BC on XOne afterwards, Its a huge plus for me now and I love it. Its much more convenient than to take out old consoles and play them, something which I almost never did.....but now that they are available on XOne via a press of a button, its far easier to play them and I do that more frequently, It changed the way I play retro games.

Also, many of them are graphically enhanced on the X for free, and you get to use the new hardware and features and the online is intact most of the times. There's a ton of benefits for me to be playing them on the new hardware and I sincerely hope this continues with the next Xbox.

I think ms has made BC kind of relevant this generation but it has really papered over cracks slightly.

I bought a PS2 over a GameCube because of it. I bought a Wii so I could also play GameCube games. I bought a 360 over a PS3 because it could play Xbox games as well.

BC is hugely important to me and always has been, and if the PS5 is fully BC with PS4 games, I'll put off getting a PS4.

It's not a huge seller or even primary feature, but it's certainly at least a convenience thing for one you move from one hardware iteration to the next. If they are using a similar architecture and off the shelf parts again, there's really no reason to NOT have the feature built in. With PS4 it was obviously an engineering issue to get PS3 games running... due to the cell processor.

Hopefully going forward we will have full backwards compatibility AND that also applies to all games (100%) in your PSN/Xbox Live library.

BC has always been a huge feature for me which is why I was pissed when PS3 took it out. I understood PS4 not having it for architecture reasons but it would have been awesome.

The reason I like BC is because it allows pairing down the hardware connected to the TV or in storage but keeps the games viable.

This is true for retro games (either in the collections or the SNES classic consoles), I find myself often just blasting through all the retro games just to get a sampling of them or for nostalgia, but hardly finishing any of them.

However when talking about just 1 gen back, I still go back and play the occasional PS3 games all the way to completion. It would be nice to not have to hook up the old console. So I could definitely see myself popping in the occasional PS4 game into a PS5, especially if it plays them at the higher settings.

It was for the XB1 because that's all it had going for it.

There's a work-in-progress PS4 emulator on the PC with Vulkan API + AVX/BMI1/VT instructions system requirements.

PS4 emulator translates GCN's instruction set into Vulkan API calls. We already know Vulkan API calls to GCN instruction conversion.

Right. That will continue. But I think the PS5 will have very good BC for PS4 games. You know what I mean? There will be little to no need for emulators from that period onwards if Sony and Nintendo don't get all weird on us. I think we'll have a PS7 at some point that will play 99% of the PS4/PS5/PS6 games without hiccups. And a Switch 4 that will play Switch 1, 2 and 3 games.

Licenses could be a problem though... I don't know how they work when it comes to BC.

It's a cool feature to have especially with the way Microsoft went about it, but I doubt that anyone will avoid a new console because of that.

GCN's wavefront instructions are like 2048 bit wide vector instructions which is far cry from SPE's 128 bit wide vector length.

According to AMD's patents, future AMD GPUs has variable instruction length which heralds back to X86's style variable length instruction set which differs from RISC's fix length instruction set.

NVIDIA CUDA warp-front can be 16 or 32 data element wide i.e. similar to 512bit or 1024 bit wide vector instruction length.

Meanwhile, Intel scaling it's AVX towards 512 bit vector instructions with 1024 bit vector instructions road map.

Major difference between Intel AVX vs NV CUDA/AMD GCN is the GPU's wave-front or warp fronts vector instructions payload includes multiple vector instructions instead of single vector instructions.

AMD/NV GPUs = MIMD, multiple instructions on multiple data vector math

Intel AVX = SIMD, single instructions on multiple data vector math

Couldn't care less about BC, I don't buy new systems to play my old games.

Yes BC is a big deal as it extends your catalogue of games to play.

Why would you praise less value? Seems stupid to me.

Iunno. For me it is. It's nice to not be forced to bust out your old systems.

Backwards compatibility is awesome. With the Xbox One you can play games from three generations on the one console with quality of life improvements such as faster load times, higher frame rates, a better controller with a headphone jack and if you have a Xbox One X then higher resolutions too.

Sure, you can do all of this with a PC of course, but there's still a handful of great games which aren't available on there unless you go down the emulation route (which is its own can of worms) - Metal Gear Solid HD Collection, Panzer Dragoon Orta, Crimson Skies, Mercenaries, SSX 3, Red Dead Redemption, Fight Night Champion, Skate 3, Lost Odyssey and Blue Dragon for example.

I'm not saying it's a system selling feature for everyone of course, but in my opinion it's worth it if you're interested in catching up on games from previous generations which you missed out on and can find one cheap enough.

Digital libraries within an ecosystem.

For this reason PS5 has to be BC weather Sony thinks it "sells" systems or not. But furthermore, for this reason, it absolutely is a selling point for people who invested an entire generation into a single ecosystem's digital store.

If Sony doesn't carry games forward on their digital store, they'd risk losing millions of potential PS5 buyers due to the fact that people wouldn't feel tied into Sony's ecosystem anymore. People have spent hundreds and hundreds of dollars on digital store fronts this gen. Not utilizing this to lock people into the next system would be an error of enormous proportions.

I already bought an Xbox One and BC stuff came after for me. But I definitely get a lot of use of the feature myself. And it means a lot to me MS honored rights to many of the purchases I made digitally on Xbox 360. At first BC seemed plagued, games ran crappy and it it seemed random which ones played better. Now everything there is much improved with performance and the library now has many games worth revisiting. My X definitely helps with its cleaning up look of games for 4K display, even for games not properly X-enhanced, and those that are x-enhanced look really good. Still, not sure if ever going to be a selling point, certainly a great feature as far as their support for it goes.

The lack of BC for Sony and Nintendo devices won't stop me from getting them, there will still be stuff worth playing, but it will put a stop for me buying digital content on them until they get better at honoring rights and bridging libraries between their devices.

Nah, I don't care much for BC normally since I don't sell my old consoles and games. It's a nice feature to have but not essential normally.

Going forward though, I see BC being more essential due to the current trend of digital libraries. I like many gamers have found myself in a situation where I own more digital games for my console than physical ones, making the whole idea of digital ecosystems more important this gen. I'll feel more comfortable buying digital games if I know they will be playable on future consoles as it's more convenient that way. I have a huge digital library now as I'm sure most gamers do, chances are I'll want my digital library to move forward with me as newer console iterations come out. This is why BC is about to become far more relevant than it has ever been in the past. Sony knows this and it's probably why they switched to the x86 architecture this gen so that all future Sony consoles can have smooth transitions with people's digital libraries. It's going to be far easier for Sony to convince current PS4 owners to upgrade to PS5 now that it would have been if PS5 didn't have BC with PS4 games.

Honestly, I think it's a feature I've missed on my PS4. At this point in 2019, I don't have much interest in playing PS3 games, but early in this console generation, I was still playing a few. I have quite a few PS4 games that I'll want to play next gen so backwards compatibility is a big selling point for me. Now, I would purchase the PS5 no matter the stance on this feature, but I'm thrilled they are including it.

I wish all consoles' exclusives end up on PC. That's a proper BC platform.

@henrythefifth: To me BC is such a blessing!! And I love it so much, it's so nice to have your games move forward with you. I'm the type of gamer who usually gets rid of my older consoles as the new ones come out. And with backwards compatibility I'm able to keep my games and add them to my current library of games so that way if I feel like playing an old game which I do every once in a while it's nice to know its there and works and in Microsoft case usually works better!! Just a + anyway u look at a it. Some people use it all the time and some never do but it's nice to have.

To me it is. No bc is partly why I don’t love the PS4. I’m a pc gamer at heart so the idea of upgrading just to lose all my old games sucks for me. I wish bc was across the board on consoles and i hope to see that day.

@henrythefifth:

The only BC I accept is the remaster and remake kind. Otherwise, IDGAF. I never used the Xbox One for BC and I have plenty of digital Xbox 360 games. It feels like a waste of space.

BC is a selling point. I know a few people to buy the DS lite just to play GBA games. I don't think as many people use BC to make it profitable but its the thought, that does make it profitable. I think if accessories were BC with last gen, it would help a lot more then just games. There's rumours the PSVR will be BC with the PS5, which would be great.

BC will be a big selling point next-gen because it will allow games to go from 30fps to 60fps with the more powerful CPU without the need for a remaster version. A simple patch from the devs can enable this.

Even though I still keep my consoles I love backwards compatibility because I don’t want to have to keep my systems hooked up or drag them out whenever I feel like playing a game from a previous gen.

b/c probably isn't a mass-market selling point.. It's simply an extremely consumer friendly feature..

I'm not sure why this is so hard to understand.. Hardware sales don't always equate to the most consumer friendly product..

My biggest issue with BC is hard drive space.

I have 360 Slim with 500GB HD. And its full of my fave 360 games. Yeah, there is only about 6GB free space left!

So, if I installed all my fave 360 games on Xbone, there would be no room for new games.

(at this point all trolls will point out that Xbone does not have new games...)

And it will be even bigger issue with PS5. PS4 games have huge installs when updates are counted in, and I've no desire to clutter up PS5 HD with PS4 installs.

BC is one of the reasons why PC is the best platform.

The issue with BC on consoles is that playing the old games on new hardware does not give you higher resolution and FPS. If they fix that, then it will be a major deal and a lot more people would use that kind of feature.

It is to some degree for early adopters even if they didn't own the previous console of that company because they will have a lot of games to choose from while waiting for the ones they want for their new console. But after that i guess it's just convinient to play anything in your collection without having to swap between consoles; but hardly is what sell consoles.

@ronvalencia: I didn't notice it was you I was replying to. I should have expected some wave vectors.

Couldn't agree more not only that but arcade emulation for old people like me and then on top of that playing it in VR to add to the immersion is amazing.

BC was a big selling point back in the PS2 era. Being able to play the large PS1 library right from the start gave it a big advantage over the competition, which had to build their library from scratch. Back when the PS2 library was limited, it was the PS1 library that helped drive it, before the PS2 library started expanding. BC helped fill the void in the PS2 library in its first year on the market. So it was definitely an advantage back then.